Man is in painten bright balls bat the airfalling through the windowon which his double leans a net the air madeto catch the ten bright balls

Man is a roomwhere the malefic hand turns a knobon the unseen unknown double's door

Man is in painwith his navel hook caught on a stone quarrywhere ten bright balls chose to landand where the malefic hand carveson gelatinous air the windowto slam shut on his shadow's tail

ten bright balls bounce into the unseenunknown double's netMan is a false windowthrough which his double walks to the truththat falls as ten bright ballsthe malefic hand tossed into the airMan is in painten bright spikes nailed to the door

Side by side, their faces blurred,The earl and countess lie in stone,Their proper habits vaguely shownAs jointed armour, stiffened pleat,And that faint hint of the absurd —The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroqueHardly involves the eye, untilIt meets his left-hand gauntlet, stillClasped empty in the other hand, andOne sees, with a sharp tender shock,His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.Such faithfulness in effigyWas just a detail friends would see:A sculptor’s sweet commissioned graceThrown off in helping to prolongThe Latin names around the base.

They would not guess how early inTheir supine stationary voyageThe air would change to soundless damage,Turn the old tenantry away;How soon succeeding eyes beginTo look, not read. Rigidly they

Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadthsOf time. Snow fell, undated. LightEach summer thronged the glass. A brightLitter of birdcalls strewed the sameBone-riddled ground. And up the pathsThe endless altered people came,

Washing at their identity.Now, helpless in the hollow ofAn unarmorial age, a troughOf smoke in slow suspended skeinsAbove their scrap of history,Only an attitude remains:

Time has transfigured them intoUntruth. The stone fidelityThey hardly meant has come to beTheir final blazon, and to proveOur almost-instinct almost true:What will survive of us is love.

What do they think has happened, the old fools,To make them like this? Do they somehow supposeIt's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and droolsAnd you keep on pissing yourself, and can't rememberWho called this morning ? Or that, if they only chose,They could alter things back to when they danced all night,Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?Or do they fancy there's really been no change,And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming

At death, you break up: the bits that were youStart speeding away from each other for everWith no one to see. It's only oblivion, true:We had it before, but then it was going to end,And was all the time merging with a unique endeavourTo bring to bloom the million-petalled flowerOf being here. Next time you can't pretendThere'll be anything else. And these are the first signs:Not knowing how, not hearing who, the powerOf choosing gone. Their looks show that they're for it:Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines-How can they ignore it?

Perhaps being old is having lighted roomsInside your head, and people in them, acting.People you know, yet can't quite name; each loomsLike a deep loss restored, from known doors turning,

Setting down a Iamp, smiling from a stair, extractingA known book from the shelves; or sometimes onlyThe rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning,The blown bush at the window, or the sun' sFaint friendliness on the wall some lonelyRain-ceased midsummer evening. That is where they live:Not here and now, but where all happened once.This is why they give

An air of baffled absence, trying to be thereYet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leavingIncompetent cold, the constant wear and tearOf taken breath, and them crouching belowExtinction' s alp, the old fools, never perceivingHow near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet.The peak that stays in view wherever we goFor them is rising ground. Can they never tellWhat is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night?

Sympathy in white majorPhilip Larkin (England, 1922-1985)When I drop four cubes of iceChimingly in a glass, and addThree goes of gin, a lemon slice,And let a ten-ounce tonic voidIn foaming gulps until it smoothersEverything else up to the edge,I lift the lot in private pledge:He devoted his life to others.

While other people wore like clothesThe human beings in their daysI set myself to bring to thoseWho thought I could the lost displays;It didn't work for them or me,But all concerned were nearer thus(Or so we thought) to all the fussThan if we'd missed it separately.

A decent chap, a real good sort,Straight as a die, one of the best,A brick, a trump, a proper sport,Head and shoulders above the rest;How many lives would have been duller Had he not been here below?Here's to the whitest man I know -Though white is not my favourite colour.

You do not come dramatically, with dragonsThat rear up with my life between their pawsAnd dash me butchered down beside the wagons,The horses panicking; nor as a clauseClearly set out to warn what can be lost,What out-of-pocket charges must be borneExpenses met; nor as a draughty ghostThat's seen, some mornings, running down a lawn.

It is these sunless afternoons, I findInstall you at my elbow like a bore.The chestnut trees are caked with silence. I'mAware the days pass quicker than before,Smell staler too. And once they fall behindThey look like ruin. You have been here some time.

To step over the low wall that dividesRoad from concrete walk above the shoreBrings sharply back something known long before -The miniature gaiety of seasides.Everything crowds under the low horizon:Steep beach, blue water, towels, red bathing caps,The small hushed waves' repeated fresh collapseUp the warm yellow sand, and further offA white steamer stuck in the afternoon -

Still going on, all of it, still going on!To lie, eat, sleep in hearing of the surf(Ears to transistors, that sound tame enoughUnder the sky), or gently up and downLead the uncertain children, frilled in whiteAnd grasping at enormous air, or wheelThe rigid old along for them to feelA final summer, plainly still occursAs half an annual pleasure, half a rite,

As when, happy at being on my own,I searched the sand for Famous Cricketers,Or, farther back, my parents, listenersTo the same seaside quack, first became known.Strange to it now, I watch the cloudless scene:The same clear water over smoothed pebbles,The distant bathers' weak protesting treblesDown at its edge, and then the cheap cigars,The chocolate-papers, tea-leaves, and, between

The rocks, the rusting soup-tins, till the firstFew families start the trek back to the cars.The white steamer has gone. Like breathed-on glassThe sunlight has turned milky. If the worstOf flawless weather is our falling short,It may be that through habit these do best,Coming to the water clumsily undressedYearly; teaching their children by a sortOf clowning; helping the old, too, as they ought.

When I see a couple of kidsAnd guess he's fucking her and she'sTaking pills or wearing a diaphragm,I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives-Bonds and gestures pushed to one sideLike an outdated combine harvester,And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder ifAnyone looked at me, forty years back,And thought, That'll be the life; No God any more, or sweating in the dark About hell and that, or having to hide What you think of the priest. He And his lot will all go down the long slideLike free bloody birds. And immediatelyRather than words comes the thought of high windows:The sun-comprehending glass,And beyond it, the deep blue air, that showsNothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

The bottle is drunk out by one;At two, the book is shut;At three, the lovers lie apart,Love and its commerce done;And now the lumious watch-handsShow after four o'clock,Time of night when straying windsTrouble the dark.

And I am sick for want of sleep;So sick, that I can half-believeThe soundless river pouring from the caveIs neither strong, nor deep;Only an image fancied in conceit.I like and wait for morning, and the birds,The first steps going down the unswept street,Voices of girls with scarves around their heads.

How did you decide to translate mefrom one language to another let'ssay from the English of friendshipto the French of lovers we'd knowneach other half a year when one dayas we were talking (it was about oneof your drawings) suddenly you curledyourself against me and drew mylips down to yours it was so deftan alternance from one language tothe other as if to say yes you canspeak French to me now if you wish.

you in i'm not talking aboutperfume or even thesweet odor of your skinbut of theair itselfi want to shareyour airinhaling what youexhalei'd like to be thatclosetwo of usbreathing each otheras one as that.

There's something holy aboutfalling asleep pressed closeagainst a beloved is it a sur-vival from some primitive riteit's more than the huddlingtogether of animals in thestorm is one body a sanctu-ary for another the enlace-ment's a vow for the futurea pledge not to be brokennow blood touches blood andbreath breath as if they werehands touching and holding.

It's not so simple As the biological imperative To proagate the race. There's that, of course, But it's also the way you look At me, your face alight with joy And the way your voice sounds In the dark. What makes your love Choose me? Once I asked you. But you wouldn't answer. It was your secret. Keep it so."

.I handed her the mirror, and said:Please address these questions to the proper person!Please make all request to head-quarters!In all matters of emotional importanceplease approach the supreme authority direct!--So I handed her the mirror.

And she would have broken it over my head,but she caught sight of her own reflectionand that held her spellbound for two secondswhile I fled.

To women, as far as I'm concerned David Herbert Lawrence (England, 1885-1930)

The feelings I don't have I don't have.The feelings I don't have, I won't say I have.The felings you say you have, you don't have.The feelings you would like us both to have, weneither of us have.The feelings people ought to have, they never have.If people say they've got feelings, you may be prettysure they haven't got themSo if you want either of us to feel anything at allyou'd better abandon all idea of feelings altogether.

Climbing through the January snow, into the Lobo CanyonDark grow the spruce-trees, blue is the balsam,water sounds still unfrozen, and the trail is still evidentMen!Two men!Men! The only animal in the world to fear!

They hesitate.We hesitate.They have a gun.We have no gun.

Then we all advance, to meet.

Two Mexicans, strangers, emerging our of the dark andsnow and inwardness of the Lobo valley.What are they doing here on this vanishing trail?

What is he carrying?Something yellow.A deer?

Qué tiene amigo?- León

He smiles foolishly as if he were caught doing wrong.And we smile, foolishly, as if we didn't know.He is quite gentle and dark-faced.

It is a mountain lion,A long, long, slim cat, yellow like a lioness.Dead.

He trapped her this morning, he says, smiling foolishly.

Life up her face,Her round, bright face, bright as frost.Her round, fine-fashioned head, with two dead ears;And stripes in the brilliant frost of her face, sharp, fine dark rays,Dark, keen, fine rays in the brilliant frost of her face.Beautiful dead eyes.

Hermoso es!

They go out towards the open;We go out into the gloom of Lobo.And above the trees I found her lair,A hole in the blood-orange brilliant rocks that stick up, a little cave.And bones, and twigs, and a perilous ascent.

So, she will never leap up that way again, with the yellow flash of a mountain lion's long shoot!And her bright striped frost-face will never watch any more, out of the shadowof the cave in the blood- orange rock,Above the trees of the Lobo dark valley-mouth!

Instead, I look out.And out to the dim of the desert, like a dream, never real;To the snow of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the ice of the mountains of Picoris,And near across at the opposite steep of snow, green trees motionless standing in snow, like a Christmas toy.

And I think in this empty world there was room for me and a mountain lion.And I think in the world beyond, how easily we might spare a million or two humansAnd never miss them.Yet what a gap in the world, the missing white frost-face of that slim yellow mountain lion!

The first day to heave your feet little by little from the shell,Not yet awake,And remain lapsed on earth,Not quite alive.

A tiny, fragile, half-animate bean.

To open your tiny beak-mouth, that looks as if it would never openLike some iron door;To lift the upper hawk-beak from the lower baseAnd reach your skinny neckAnd take your first bite at some dim bit of herbage,Alone, small insect,Tiny bright-eye,Slow one.

You draw your head forward, slowly, from your little wimpleAnd set forward, slow-dragging, on your four-pinned toes,Rowing slowly forward.Wither away, small bird?Rather like a baby working its limbs,Except that you make slow, ageless progressAnd a baby makes none.

The touch of sun excites you,And the long ages, and the lingering chillMake you pause to yawn,Opening your impervious mouth,Suddenly beak-shaped, and very wide, like some suddenly gaping pincers;Soft red tongue, and hard thin gums,Then close the wedge of your little mountain front,Your face, baby tortoise.

Do you wonder at the world, as slowly you turn your head in its wimpleAnd look with laconic, black eyes?Or is sleep coming over you again,The non-life?

You are so hard to wake.

Are you able to wonder?Or is it just your indomitable will and pride of the first lifeLooking roundAnd slowly pitching itself against the inertiaWhich had seemed invincible?

The vast inanimate,And the fine brilliance of your so tiny eye,Challenger.

Nay, tiny shell-bird.What a huge vast inanimate it is, that you must row against,What an incalculable inertia.

Voiceless little bird,Resting your head half out of your wimpleIn the slow dignity of your eternal pause.Alone, with no sense of being alone,And hence six times more solitary;Fulfilled of the slow passion of pitching through immemorial agesYour little round house in the midst of chaos.

Over the garden earth,Small bird,Over the edge of all things.

Traveller,With your tail tucked a little on one sideLike a gentleman in a long-skirted coat.

Crucificion.Male tortoise, cleaving behind the hovel-wall of that dense female,Mounted and tense, spread-eagle, out-reaching out of the shellIn tortoise-nakedness,

Long neck, and long vulnerable limbs extruded, spread-eagle over her house-roof,And the deep, secret, all-penetrating tail curved beneath her walls,Reaching and gripping tense, more reaching anguish in uttermost tensionTill suddenly, in the spasm of coition, tupping like a jerking leap, and oh!Opening its clenched face from rus outstretched neckAnd giving that fragile yell, that scream,Super-audible,From rus pink, cleft, old-man's mounth,Giving up fue ghost,Or screaming in Pentecost, receiving the ghost.

His scream, and his moment's subsidence,The moment of eternal silence,Yet unreleased, and after the moment, the sudden, startling jerk of coition, and at onceThe inexpressible faint yell-And so on, till the Iast pIasm of my body was melted backTo the primeval rudiments of life, and the secret.

So he tups, and screamsTime after each jerk, the longish interval,The tortoise eternity,Age-long, reptiIian persistence,Heart-throb, slow heart-throb, persistent for the next spasm.

I remember, when I was a boy,I heard the scream of a frog, which was caught with his foot in the mount of an upstarting snake;I remember when I first heard bull-frogs break into sound in the spring;I remember hearing a wild goose out of the throat of nightCry loudIy, beyond the lake of waters;I remember the first time, out of a bush in the darkness, a nightigale's piercing cries and gurgles startled the depths of my soul;I remember the scream of a rabbit as I went through a wood at midnight;I remember the heifer in her heat, blorting and blorting through the hours, persistent and irrepresible;I remember my first terror hearing fue howl of- weird, amorous cats;I remember fue scream of a terrified, injured horse, fue sheet-lightning,And running away from fue sound of a woman in labour, something like and owl whooing.And listening inwardly to fue first bleat of a lamb,The first wail of an infant,And my mother singing to herself,And the first tenor singing of the passionate throat of a young collier, who has long since drunk himself to death,The first elements of foreign speechOn wild dark lips.

And more than all these,And less than all these,This last,Strange, faint coition yellOf the male tortoise at extremity,Tiny from under the very edge of fue farthest far-off horizon of life.

The cross,The wheel on which our silence first is broken,Sex, which breaks up our integrety, our single inviolability, our dee silence,Tearing a cry from us.

Sex, which breaks us into voice, sets us calling across fue deeps, calling, calling for the complement,Singing, and calling, and singing again, being answered, having found.Torn, to become whole again, after long seeking for what is lost,The same cry from the tortoise as from Christ, the Osiris cry of abandonment,That which is whole, torn asunder,That which is in part, finding its whole again throughout the universe.

(...)The Lords of Life are the Masters of Death.Blue is the breath of Quetzalcoatl.Red is Huitzilopochtli’s blood.But the grey dog belongs to the ash of the world.The Lords of Life are the Masters of Death.Dead are the grey dogs.Living are the Lords of Life.Blue is the deep sky and the deep water.Red is the blood and the fire.Yellow is the flame.The bone is white and alive.The hair of night is dark over our faces.But the grey dogs are among the ashes.The Lords of Life are the Masters of Death.’(...)

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;Taking me back down the vista of years, till I seeA child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling stringsAnd pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.

In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of songBetrays me back, till the heart of me weep to belongTo the old sunday evening at home, with winter outsideAnd hymns in the cozy parlour , the thinking piano our guide.

So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamourWith the great black piano apassionato.The glamourOf childish days is upon me, my manhoods is castDown in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.

Isn’t hansome? Isn’t he a fine specimen?Doesn’t he look the fresh clean englishman, outside?Isn’t god’s own image? tramping his thirty miles a dayafter partridges, or a little rubber ball?wouldn’t you like to be like that, well off, and quite the thing?

Oh, but wait!Let him meet a new emotion, let him be faced with another man’s need.let him come home a bit a moral difficulty, let life face him with a newdemand on his understandingan then watch him go soggy, like a wet meringue.Watch him turn into a mess, either a fool or a bully,Just watch the display of him, confronted with a new demand on hisinteligencea new life – demand.

How beastly the bourgeois isespecially the male of species-

Nicely groomed, like a mushroomstanding there so sleek and erect and eyeable-and like a fungus , living on the remains of bygone lifesucking his life out of the dead leaves of greater life than his own.

And even so, he’s stale, he’s been there too longTouch him, and you’ll find he’s gone insidejust like an old mushroom, all wormy inside, and hollowunder a smooth skin and an upright appearance.

Well then, the last day the sharks appeared.Dark fins appear, innocentas if in fair warning. The sea becomessinister*, are they everywhere?I tell you, they break six feet of water*.Isn’t it the same sea, and won’t weplay in it any more?I like it clear and not too calm, enough wavesto fly in on. For the first timeI dared to swim out of my depth.It was sundown when they came, the time when a sheen of copper still the sea,not dark enough for moonlight, clear enoughto see them easily. Darkthe sharp lift of the fins.

The tree of knowledge was the tree of reason.That's why the taste of itdrove us from Eden. That fruitwas meant to be dried and milled to a fine powderfor use a pinch at a time, a condiment.God had probably planned to tell us laterabout this new pleasure.We stuffed our mouths full of it,gorged on but and if and how and againbut, knowing no better.It's toxic in large quantities; fumesswirled in our heads and around usto form a dense cloud that hardened to steel,a wall between us and God, Who was Paradise.Not that God is unreasonable – but reasonin such excess was tyrannyand locked us into its own limits, a polished cellreflecting our own faces. God liveson the other side of that mirror,but through the slit where the barrier doesn'tquite touch ground, manages stillto squeeze in – as filtered light,splinters of fire, a strain of music heardthen lost, then heard again.

In the long, sleepless watches of the night,A gentle face —the face of one long dead—Looks at me from the wall, where round its headThe night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.Here in this room she died; and soul more whiteNever through martyrdom of fire was ledTo its repose; nor can in books be readThe legend of a life more benedight.There is a mountain in the distant WestThat, sun-defying, in its deep ravinesDisplays a cross of snow upon its side.Such is the cross I wear upon my breastThese eighteen years, through all the changing scenesAnd seasons, changeless since the day she died.

As a fond mother when the day is o'erLeads by the hand her little child to bed,Half willing, half reluctant to be led,And leave his broken playthings on the floor,Still gazing at them through the open door,Nor wholly reassured and comfortedBy promises of others in their steadWhich, though more splendid, may not please him more.So Nature deals with us and takes awayOur playthings one by one, and by the handLeads us to rest so gently, that we go,Scarce knowing if we wished to go or stay,Being too full of sleep to understandHow far the unknown transcends the what we know.